Three Engineering Faculty Recognized as Chancellor’s Professors
July 22, 2024 - Three engineering faculty – Dimitri Papamoschou, Stephen Ritchie and Brett Sanders – have been named UC Irvine Chancellor’s Professors in recognition of their extraordinary scholarly achievements and exceptional value to the university.
Papamoschou is a professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering whose research interests include compressible turbulence, jet and fan aeroacoustics and advanced noise source imaging methods. In jet aeroacoustics, he has shown the potential for noise reduction by asymmetric distortion of the jet velocity field, a concept that has led to several patents. He has also developed low-cost predictive methods for this type of noise reduction based on a special formulation of the acoustic analogy. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and recipient of the 2017 AIAA Aeroacoustics Award. He serves as chair of the AIAA Aeroacoustics Technical Committee and member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the AIAA Journal.
Ritchie is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the UCI Institute of Transportation Studies. His research focuses on intelligent and sustainable transportation systems planning and engineering, emphasizing emerging technology research, development and field deployment in support of decarbonization policies for the nation’s freight transportation system. He currently leads the ITS-Irvine Freight Mobility Living Laboratory initiative. Ritchie was a recipient of the U.S. National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, the Pyke Johnson Outstanding Paper Award from the Transportation Research Board and “Best of ITS” Research Award from ITS America. He served as founding editor-in-chief of the international journal, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies.
Sanders is a professor of civil and environmental engineering whose research examines flooding and erosion risks, including beach loss. He specializes in the development of computer algorithms for simulating flow and transport in river and coastal systems, including the ParBreZo and PRIMo models, which have enabled breakthrough discoveries of changing flood risks across southern California and beyond. A recent application of PRIMo revealed that risks to populations exposed to flooding in Los Angeles are 20 times greater than suggested by federal flood maps, and those risks disproportionately fall across Black, Hispanic and disadvantaged populations. Sanders is a sought-after spokesperson for communicating flood and erosion risks to the public, and he was featured in an award-winning documentary film, “Coastal Crisis, California’s Vanishing Beaches.” Sanders is a fellow of the Engineering Mechanics Institute, and the Environmental and Water Resources Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He was also selected as one of the 125 Most Influential People of Orange County by the Orange County Register.
With the addition of these three, the Samueli School now has nine Chancellor’s Professors: Amir AghaKouchak, civil and environmental engineering; Plamen Atanassov, chemical and biomolecular engineering; Payam Heydari, Syed Jafar and Hamid Jafarkhani, electrical engineering and computer science; and Abe Lee, biomedical engineering.
– Lori Brandt
